Stay out, all you long term “stay the course” guys. Unless it’s a better strategy. Let’s talk markets, options, daytrading, commodities market, short term buys, and such here. Sheer gambling!
Anyone else partake? 90% of my savings is just that, saving in stable investments, but 10% is pure fun speculation. Anyone want to talk shop I know a lot of unemployed people out there with savings have thought about it.
Epic thread imminent!
Put everything into Ben Wa balls.
Put Ben Wa balls into everything.
I like to invest in dark chocolate, red wine, and guest bikinis.
Damn you, now I need to buy a new keyboard, coffee everywhere.
10 bucks!? You crazy man…
I’d put it all on a single number on the roulette and be done with it.
Stay out, all you long term “stay the course” guys. Unless it’s a better strategy. Let’s talk markets, options, daytrading, commodities market, short term buys, and such here. Sheer gambling!
I’ll stay out but the reason I came in here was because of the thread title. You said it yourself, basically. It SHOULD be titled “The speculating thread…” because what you’re talking about here isn’t investing.
First idea.
Look for stocks that are at their 52 week low. Investment opportunities abound, if you’re cautious and/or willing to take substantial risk.
Invest heavily in porkbellies after lunch. Sell right before lunch the next day.
Don’t call the thread “The investment thread” if you’re not going to talk about investing
That way all the long term “investors” will stay out.
rolleyes
This thread is about long term relationships, right?
It’s a typo. He wants to talk about liturgical garments.
You know what I like? A handsome cassock with a nice smart stole. Really makes a guy look churchy. Then you can pimp that shit up with a giant pectorale. What what?
You know, about 4 or 5 years ago, this thread might have gone somewhere.
When I first found the forum back on the old software, this would have been a very interesting discussion.
Now it’s just a bunch of people trying to be funny and failing, the people anticipating the people trying to be funny and failing, and a couple of assholes.
Be proud, QT3. We’ll catch up to GAF in no time.
I’ll bite, although this thread is probably too far gone at this point (and mmalloy makes a good suggestion as well).
One of my favorite “fun” strategies is selling covered calls. Since I don’t know your expertise, ElG (and I’m no market genius) this involves:
Owning a stock. Any stock, really as long as you have at least 100 shares.
You think the stock is going to stay at the same price, or potentially go down a bit.
You sell a bunch of calls (the right to purchase your stock) at a strike price that is slightly higher than the current price. You get a premium for each share by doing this.
The stock price stays the same or goes down.
The calls you sold expire without the buyer exercising them. You keep your stock and the option premium. Profit!
Potential bad outcomes:
The stock price drops a lot: Your underlying stock is now worth a lot less. Worse, since your shares were committed to the calls, you weren’t able to sell them. At least you have the option premiums to soften the blow.
The stock price takes off: You sold your awesome stock at a price that was lower than what you could have received. Sucks, but you’re not really out anything.
Is it speculation? Absolutely! But it is kind of fun at times. Also note that you’re going to pay short term capital gains on any profits you make while doing this.
There are other bad outcomes you’re missing that aren’t readily apparent.
Congratulations, you now owe the broker sales commissions on each of the 20 stock sales they just made to cover your assignment. That’s $10-$20 per option lot, or around $0.10 - $0.20 per share. Was it worth it? Probably not if the sales price for each of your out of the money covered calls was $0.25.
You should have become independently wealthy at the end of 2008. Then just dump everything into the market when it tanked, and Bob’s your uncle. Hindsight is fantastic for this sort of thing, although it doesn’t really produce much cash.
Here’s a fun one: Wait for the next country to head towards collapse, then watch for the biggest bank in that country to have a stock meltdown. Jump in before the bailout and you’re golden*.
H.
*Or pyrite. You’ll know in a few weeks either way.
Definitely avoid selling options unless you’re comfortable with the time value of money, offsets so they don’t get assigned (as LoK alluded to above), can cover any assignments, &c. However, buying options is safer in terms of limiting your downside, as worst case scenario they expire worthless so you only lose your up-front premium, and so that might be an amusing pasttime. I certainly want to get into it (buying, not selling) once I’m done with school.
In terms of goofing with trading/speculation, I always thought penny stocks and pink sheets would be fun. Doing research on poorly covered companies, buying those you think will get huge (either through a buyout offer or something else) and even trading them.
(edit: sorry, server glitch while posting)
Real ideas: Invest in copper. It’s the current “gonna run out” boogeyman. Or in Fannie Mae, most future indicators are up but the stock is still stagnant, tons of upside.
H.